


can't no preacher-man save my soul

by ScatteredWords



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: (I mean not much but this is set in the southeastern US so), (less than you might expect; this is based on a real place that can be surprisingly tolerant), (there's unfortunately bound to be some), F/F, Homophobia, Multi, Southern Gothic, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-01-28 18:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12612844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScatteredWords/pseuds/ScatteredWords
Summary: Laura Hollis is the sheriff's daughter in Styria, Tennessee, where the last interesting thing to happen was a Civil War battle. Well, the last interesting thing that outsiders would know about. When a strange girl arrives in town running from an unknown threat and bearing ties to a dark secret from 140 years ago, the past returns to haunt the present with a vengeance.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Am I really starting another multichapter when I already have two in progress?
> 
> Yes. Yes, I am. 
> 
> I'm planning to keep it to these three and jump around between them as inspiration strikes. Hopefully I'll be able to make that work. In a way, this is the Carmilla southern gothic AU I've wanted to write since I first read the book in high school. Quite a lot of Styria is based on my hometown, where there actually was a Civil War battle in November, 1864 but where there are tragically no abandoned Second Empire houses with dark, vampire-infested pasts.
> 
> Title from the Civil Wars song "Barton Hollow."

_They’ve always said the old Sheridan place was haunted, as long as I can remember._

The car gave out around Antioch, old engine finally sputtering to a halt and belching smoke from under the hood. She pulled over to the shoulder. The wheels spit gravel and a minivan behind her honked loud and long. She ignored them. There wasn’t time. There was no time for any of this. With a bitten-out curse, she flung the door open.

_It was something talked about at sleepovers once we’d all gotten as sugar-high as we could. Over a bowl of popcorn, LaFontaine would position a flashlight beneath their chin and rasp something about white ladies in dark windows and a monster who consumed anyone straying too close. At which point Perry would hit them with a pillow until they laughed and snatched it away._

Heavy black leather boots pounded the ground, muffled somewhat by the ever-present dust of a southern summer. The car was a lost cause. With one final glance back at the gleaming black machine, mottled with patches of rust, she slid down an embankment and splashed into a shallow stream. Long stalks of grass, bleached to a faded-photo green by the sun, stirred around her in the slightest breeze that did nothing but stir the heat of the day.

_They were they only when Perry’s mom wasn’t around. Or their mom. Or any of our parents, really._

_Just like I had a boyfriend every time an adult asked._

_I guess we all felt a bit like kids in books, with secret lives. Important. But nobody ever talks about how the weight of being two people can drag you down._

She stopped at a roadhouse, somewhere off the highway, just as the sun began to set. A few trudging steps took her through the swinging doors, with only one pause to glance over her shoulder. The parking lot stood nearly empty in the blue dusk. A few pickup trucks. Nothing large enough for anyone to use as cover. She let out a breath, and wandered inside to find a table.

_In my junior year, I finally did an article about the house for the school newspaper. I learned that it had a name: The Schloss. An English industrialist, Joseph Sheridan, built it after making his fortune doing something unspecified in Austria. As kids we all thought it had to be Antebellum- every old house around there was –but it turned out to date from 1870. My best guess is, he wanted to take advantage of the newfound opportunities in the postwar south. Everything was cheaper: land, raw materials, household goods. Labor, if you didn’t mind preying on former slaves who suddenly found themselves hemmed in so tightly by new laws that they were scarcely better off than before. But by all accounts, Joseph minded. I guess that’s what made him stand out to me._

“What’re you having?” the waitress asked.

She looked the girl up and down, from the brown roots of her straw-colored hair to her battered sneakers. A wordless exchanged passed between them when their eyes met. She leaned forward and touched her wrist.

“Whatever’s good.”

With a quick look around to make sure the two would-be truckers were absorbed in their second beers, the waitress jerked her head towards the back door.

_Joseph Sheridan prided himself on paying the workers in his factory fair wages. I believe he made wagon wheels, or something like that. Something similarly mundane that nobody could get along without. Maybe that’s why so many people around here hated him._

_He had a daughter. I never was able to learn much about her except a name, and a date of birth. Elle Maria Sheridan. Born on July 5th, 1851. She was nineteen when they moved here and twenty-one when a mob, with actual torches and pitchforks, marched on The Schloss._

_Yeah, there were torches and pitchforks. No joke. Someone wrote it all down in a letter._

She pulled her head away from the waitress’ throat, pressing a soft kiss to the puncture marks as if to soothe the pain and then smoothing long strands of bleached hair over the wound. The waitress whimpered softly, pressing a hand to the back of her head as if to hold her there. A sickly yellow light bulb flickered above their head as yet another moth fluttered to its death.

Something crunched on the dirt path. She looked up sharply; scanned the dark grass outside the circle of light and the black silhouette trees beyond that. Nothing. Only crickets and the periodic rush of cars on the highway.

“I have to go,” she said quietly. Quicker than the waitress’ eyes could follow, there was a hundred-dollar bill in her hand and then in the waitress’ dingy apron pocket. “For the food. Take tomorrow off if you can.”

And then she was gone. She would be gone for an hour before the waitress went to the bathroom and, waking from a glamoured stupor, began to scream.

_I stood in that clearing for hours, trying to get up the courage to even go up on the porch._

_It’s not even a menacing house. A bit derelict, but not nearly as bad as the peeling-paint, whitewashed places with shattered windows you see on the cover photo of every southern gothic playlist ever. That particular day, the gray sky reflected in the wavery leaded glass and the bare branches of the trees that framed the mansard roof rattled in the wind. If it was ever going to look frightening, it would have been then, but it still didn’t._

_I still didn’t take a step forward._

_The paint is blue, not white. Almost sky-blue. I stood there staring at the place for so long that I can close my eyes and see it perfectly now. A flash of white stirred in one window. Embarrassingly enough, I turned and ran. Later, I realized it was just a white sheet draped over a chair inside, moved by the breeze._

_Elle was in love with a girl. That’s what brought the mob. Nobody says it, but it’s true._

Around Murfreesboro, she dumped the boots in a hole in a copse of trees, on one side of a vast field. The first few steps in her bare feet were tentative, bringing whispered curses to her lips and leaving bloody footprints behind. She’d never considered how the rubbing of the stiff leather could go from inconvenience to crippling pain after hours of wear. And now here she was, dumping a perfectly good pair of Doc Martens in the backwoods of Tennessee.

The thought cause no more than a momentary twinge of annoyance. It didn’t matter. She could make this walk barefoot. She didn’t have a choice. All that mattered was to keep moving, working her way quickly and silently through the darkened trees.

The gleaming eyes of animals shrank back as she passed. That was probably for the best.

_She stayed long enough to attract the attention of people in town. Styria, medium-sized now, was tiny in the 1870s. I found a journal entry from one Adelicia Dorchester, not Elle’s friend. Elle doesn’t seem to have had any friends ._

_“The enigmatic Miss K,” the entry calls her. That’s the only mention I’ve been able to find of the mysterious houseguest, but the rest of the page makes Adelicia’s feelings clear enough. Miss K. didn’t mix well with others, preferring to stay close to Elle’s side. They whispered to each other. That alone was an unpardonable social sin, when others were present._

_My editor made me take out any reference to a relationship. “Honey, I know representation is important to you, but you just can’t know,” she said, leaning over the blond wood library desk. Her attention was quickly called away by someone wanting to return Ender’s Game, and my brilliant expose about a case of Reconstruction homophobia was dead before it could even be published._

_I know it, though. Somehow, when I look at that house- when I look at the weathered marble headstone in the Old City Cemetery that bears Elle’s name –I can feel it. It’s always been as if she’s pointing it out to me._

_The mob came, demanding the Sheridans’ mysterious houseguest. “That they turn over their guest, who had caused such chaos,” the contemporary account says. And when Joseph refused, they broke down the doors and descended on The Schloss and its inhabitants._

In the first light of sunrise, she stumbled off the road and down a dirt path. There was only so much running even her kind could take, but running was the only option. Exhausted, she let her feet carry her with no real connection to her racing mind.

No going back. Only forward. No stopping. There was no time. No time for the boots or the car. Only time to get here, the last place they’d expect her to go.

She paused for a moment on the wide front porch, swimming in and out of clarity. How had she gotten here? Still half on autopilot, her hand fumbled in the dark leather satchel slung over one shoulder until it found an old, rusted key. The other handed rested against the bright blue wall, supporting her even as she swayed dangerously. At first, the key refused to fit all the way into the old-fashioned keyhole.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered frantically. With one good smack of her palm, the key slid into place. She turned it, pushed the heavy door open just enough to slip inside, pulled the key out, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Throwing the bold, she slumped against the smooth, cool panel of mahogany and slid down until she was sitting on the floor. The sun’s early rays began to slant through the window, and the darkness of sleep finally rose up to claim her.

_They’ve always said the old Sheridan place was haunted, as long as I can remember. And the summer I turned 21, I finally believed them._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the story begins in earnest.

Three things happened simultaneously around 8:45 on the morning of July 18th.

That sounds weirdly specific, right? Like I’m some kind of cop talking into a tape recorder for official records. Let me clarify: three things happened simultaneously around 8:45 on the morning of July 18th- the morning after my 21st birthday. My dad shouted up the stairs, my phone rang, and the next-door neighbor began cutting stones outside.

I remember it so clearly because feeling quite that much like something the cat dragged in isn’t easily forgotten. My head felt like tiny gnomes had crawled inside and were trying to chisel their way back out, apparently after leaving their little wool jackets on my tongue. Burrowing deeper into my cave of covers, I willed the outside world to go away, or at least implode a bit quieter. It had never worked before, but hey, there was a first time for everything.

Except this, apparently.

“Laura! Laura Eileen Hollis, I’m coming up there if you don’t answer me!”

I rolled over, sat up, and then flopped back onto my pillow as the room spun around me. “I’m up,” I tried. My voice came out as a croak and I tried to clear my throat. The next attempt was clearer. “I’m up, Dad!”

The footsteps that had begun pounding up the stairs stopped. “Are you alright?”

My phone was still blaring a techno remix of the Harry Potter theme. I glanced at the caller ID on the screen. _Hippolyta_ , it read. With a groan, I swiped my finger across the screen and raised it to my ear.

“Hey, Danny.”

“Morning, Hollis.” My best friend’s voice sounded about as miserable as my own, tinged with the same exhaustion. “How’s the birthday girl doing this morning?”

“Ugh. I’ve definitely been better,” I replied, shifting onto my side to sandwich the plastic rectangle between my head and the pillow.

“Laura?” came the concerned voice from downstairs again.

“Oh shoot. Hold on.” I pushed myself up on one elbow and placed a hand over the phone. “I’m fine, Dad! See you tonight!”

“Are you sure?”

He just cares a lot. He just cares a lot. After several repetitions of my time-tested mantra, I called back, “Yep! Just peachy! Have a good day at work. Catch lots of speeding JBA kids.”

That won me a chuckle and the sound of heavy shoes crossing the front hall. The door opened- beeping to indicate an open entryway, because with great cop father comes great alarm system –and then closed. Once I heard the sound of Dad’s key in the lock, I fell back into bed.

“Reassuring the dread Officer Hollis that you haven’t been murdered in your sleep?” Danny asked wryly.

I rolled my eyes, and though she couldn’t see it, she probably could guess my facial reactions pretty well by this point. Ten years of friendship have a way of doing that. Instead of responding directly, I made a noncommittal distressed noise.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Bed. Bed good,” I replied.

“Okay, Buffy.” Her little smirk was practically audible through the phone line. “I’m going to need you to come out of the Z-list episodes and into something a little more coherent. And less high school, by the way. Bashing John Bell Academy? Really? What are we, sixteen?”

“Mmph.” I gave up all thoughts of going back to sleep and slowly worked my way into a sitting position. “I still maintain that they drive faster than any other teenagers in the greater Nashville area.”

Danny snorted. “Yeah, I know. You tried to do a science fair project on it. When we were, again, sixteen. Just because Keith Urban’s nephew cut you off in traffic-”

“And totally got off scot-free,” I interjected.

“-doesn’t mean you have to keep holding a grudge five years later,” she finished calmly. “Don’t be such a stereotype; there’s more to life than high school rivalries.”

“Butter my butt and call me a biscuit,” I said in a half-hearted fake drawl, rubbing my aching temples. The sun was entirely too bright. Someone should have invented a solar dimmer switch. Why had nobody thought of that? I could patent the idea and make enough money to pay Mr. Welch to never turn on that damned power saw again.

“Right, biscuits. Breakfast. Just what I wanted to talk to you about.”

I squeezed my eyes as tightly closed as they would go. “Listen, Danny, I love hanging out with you and I know it’s vacation and all that, but I feel like death. Maybe another time?”

“I wish.” Danny’s voice was tight. “Do you recall any promises you might have made to Perry last night? While she was driving all of our drunk asses home from Play and you and LaF kept flipping radio channels every five seconds?”

Oh, shit. “I didn’t. Please tell me I didn’t.”

“Yep. You promised her breakfast.”

“Today?”

“Today.”

“Danny, if you have any love for me, tell me I didn’t promise to take her to Svennie’s.”

“I mean, it would be a lie, but if that’s what you really want…”

A moment of sweet relief from the noise of the saw outside was marred by a combination of fury at Drunk Laura and the passage of a car outside with its bass throbbing loudly enough to both mimic and increase the pounding in my head. I glanced at the ceiling, wincing at the twinge of pain that even moving my eyes brought.

Few places worse for a hangover than Svennie’s Bakery and Café came to mind. Not even their legendarily perfect cinnamon rolls were worth dealing with the inevitable screaming kids and moms comparing notes about their Chico’s hauls over the sound of their own offspring. Worse, its location in the middle of downtown Styria meant there were sure to be tourists, even this early in the morning. Nothing says “quaint southern restaurant” quite like wagon wheel chandeliers and baskets hanging from the ceiling, and sweating pitchers of tea labeled “sweet” and “unsweet.” That most of the pastries sold there were actually Swedish went right over their heads.

Suddenly, I noticed another sound. A sound that struck fear into my heart. Down the phone line, I heard a faint ticking noise.

“Danny. Is that your turn signal?”

“Afraid so. I’m turning into your neighborhood as we speak.” And as if to underscore the dire situation, I heard the same throbbing bassline that had swung around the cul-de-sac a moment before, albeit crackling and distant.

“No. No, no, no, no.” I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the decorative ironwork on one side of my bed. “There is absolutely no way I’m going out this morning. I refuse.”

“I told Perry we’d be along in an hour or so.” From outside came the sound of a car ascending the little hill that led to my house. “Should be enough time to pump some coffee into you. Unfortunately, it’s time for us to pay the piper.”

A car door opened and shut beneath my window. With a sigh, I slipped out of bed and headed for the hall, silently willing the floor to be a little less tilt-y. This was not the way anything good started.

\-------------------------------

“Okay, I take it back. This is the best hangover food in the state.”

The second bite of cinnamon roll tasted like heaven, sweetness and spice spreading over my tongue from the flaky, warm pastry. I swallowed and licked a bit of stiff, sugary icing off my thumb.

Perry smiled over her tea. “Better than Waffle House?”

“Waffle House who?” I asked. “I renounce Waffle House entirely. I’m going to request an annulment from Waffle House by papal dispensation.” As I picked at a bit of the gooey spiral on my plate, it stretched into a long, thin strip that finally tore off. I dangled it above my mouth like spaghetti on a fork. “This eats Waffle House for breakfast.”

“Pun intended, Henry VIII?” Danny set a steaming plate of eggs, bacon, and hash browns on the table and slid into the booth next to Perry.

“Pun very intended,” I replied. She rolled her eyes, but couldn't hide a smile.

As Perry launched into an involved discussion of how she’d tried and failed to get LaFontaine out of bed, I leaned back against the dark wood of the booth. Svennie’s was no quieter than I’d expected it to be; kids packed every inch of the place, running around in paint-stained vacation Bible school shirts and light-up sneakers and generally raising the decibel level to something like that of a rock concert. And yet…

Somehow, it was exactly the right place to be. Sunlight slanted in through the plate glass window along one wall, making the blue-and-white sign painted on it glow. Perry had tactfully chosen a booth on an angle from the window, so I was managing to keep my headache down to a dull roar without the emergency sunglasses perched atop my head. Instead of hitting our eyes, the sun turned the dust motes dancing between tables into a subtle shimmer in the air, in stark contrast to the walls that matched our deep brown booth. Even the infamously kitschy baskets hanging from the ceiling, sticky from holding decades’ worth of monkey bread and Danishes, seemed homey and comforting.

In twenty-one years, nothing about this place had changed. From the glass cases under the counter stuffed with sticky buns and sugar-dusted tea cakes to the wooden racks of Viking bread for sale that lined the walls, it was a constant in a town that changed more than most of its residents would like to admit. Styria made its money from seeming like an ageless Main Street, U.S.A., just enough to trick the tourists. Places like this that made the trickery truth were few and far between, but they were the landmarks of my life.

“…wasn’t going to turn the hose on inside the house, right, Laura? Laura?” Perry jiggled my hand gently. “Are you alright?”

I slowly came back to reality. “Hm? Yeah, sorry. Just zoning out. What’s this about a hose?”

“Oh, you’re going to love this.” Danny dragged her fork through the traces of yellow egg yolk on her plate. “Perry spent the morning discovering how not to wake someone up with cold water. Including a Super-Soaker.”

My mouth dropped open. “Who are you and what have you done with Lola Perry?” I asked, eyeing my friend with exaggerated suspicion.

Perry shook her head, red curls bouncing. “Well, you tell me what I was supposed to do! They wouldn’t wake up!”

I attacked my cinnamon roll in earnest as Danny goaded Perry mercilessly, occasionally chiming in with my thoughts on water balloons (effective) vs. spray bottles (less effective). Perry disagreed, since spray bottles had a smaller blast radius and were less likely to damage furniture.

“Okay, but if you’re concerned with damaging furniture,” Danny said around the hair tie in her mouth as she gathered her reddish-brown hair into a ponytail with one hand, “why are you throwing water around indoors in the first place?”

The topic of water-based alarm clocks took us through the rest of breakfast and out the door. As we crossed the street through shimmering heat waves rising up from the dark asphalt, the conversation shifted to plans for the day.

“Sorry, Perr,” I panted as we climbed the seemingly endless steps to the third floor of the already-packed parking garage. Who in their right mind decided that it should be this hot at 11 AM? “Sangria Laura pretty much killed my desire to do anything but go home and sleep until dinner.”

“Ditto.” Danny twirled her key fob between her fingers before hitting the unlock button. The back lights of a green Subaru blinked twice ahead of us. “I mean, not the sangria part, but the sleeping part for sure.”

Sliding open the car door, I flung myself into the backseat and fumbled for a seatbelt. “Yeah, we know, Danny. You’re a real adult who likes brown drinks that come in little glasses. No need to rub it in.”

As she twisted around to get a clear view of the ramp behind her, she shot me an amused look. “Beer counts as a brown drink in a little glass now?”

In answer, I flopped back against the seat and closed my eyes. I heard Danny chuckle, and then blissful silence broken only by the hum of the car’s engine. With the air conditioning on full blast, the sunlight actually felt kind of good on my face as we pulled out of the cool, dark garage and onto Main Street.

“Should I drop you off first?” Danny’s voice was barely louder than a whisper; she must have thought I was asleep. I didn’t hear a response from Perry, but when I opened my eyes a crack we seemed to be heading north to her place instead of south back to mine. That was fine by me. I closed my eyes again and shifted a bit to get more comfortable against the faux-leather upholstery.

I must have drifted off at some point, because at first, I wondered if I was dreaming. But there’s no way anything dreamed would stand out so clearly in my memory today- or leave physical evidence.

We had reached the stretch of backroad that lead to Perry’s and LaF’s place when I opened my eyes. I never understood quite how they could afford even their little ranch in that neighborhood, a small subdivision in the valley between two large hills. The bucolic setting normally drove property values into the million-dollar range, so either LaF’s biotech job paid more than I could have imagined or they’d gotten insanely lucky. I never asked which. Superhero movies had taught me that mysterious science gigs were best not questioned.

I blinked blearily out at the trees flashing past. Sunshine turned the green leaves shades of jade, highlighting every vein of the ones closest to the car. There had always been something peaceful about these woods, and today was no exception. Resting my chin against the little ledge below the window, I started drifting off into a Lord of the Rings-inspired daydream.

And then I saw it.

Even knowing what I know now, I don’t like to talk about it. But it’s where this story really begins, so I don’t have a choice. And it’s not like I believed it right away.

Just past the tree line, what appeared to be a naked girl bent over something gray-brown and furry. I blinked, expecting the image to resolve into something logical like a white plastic bag caught on a fence or a dog with a strange marking on its back. It didn’t.

She looked up.

I won’t forget that moment, ever. Maybe I screamed. I’m not sure. 

The lower half of her face was wet with something dark and sticky; the same substance matted the long, dark hair that draped over her and the- deer? It had to be a deer, but it couldn’t be a deer, because there was no way a naked woman could bring down a deer.

Her eyes met mine, and there was nothing human in them. Nothing that recognized me as the same species. Nothing but cold, predatory detachment. I couldn’t move. Moving would have meant weakness. Moving would have made the girl-shaped thing give chase.

The next thing I knew, the car screeched to the shoulder and stopped. I was dimly aware of Danny’s hand on my shoulder, shaking me, breaking my eye contact with the creature in the woods. Her worried face swam into view as the world seemed to fall back into place around me.

“Laura? Laura!”

“Hm?” The sound was strange coming out of me. Distant, like something I didn’t expect to hear.

“Are you alright?” she asked. 

“I…” I shook my head. “There was…something,” I managed. I couldn’t say it, couldn’t make myself describe what I’d seen. “Something in the woods. Over there.”

No sooner had I pointed out my window than Danny unbuckled her seatbelt. She practically leapt out of the car, pausing only to say, “Stay here,” before diving into the underbrush.  
“Danny!” I called, but it was too late. There was nothing to do but follow her instructions. So we sat there, Perry’s eyes never leaving my face. The lines on her forehead deepened with each passing minute. I looked down and noticed dimly that my hands were shaking.

After what seemed like an eternity, Danny reappeared through the trees. Her expression was puzzled, but not frightened. 

“I didn’t see anything,” she said as she climbed back into the driver’s seat. “There’s a dead buck a ways back, though. Looks like something tore its throat open, which was kind of odd.”

As we got back on the road and continued towards our destination, Perry mused aloud about whether she should call Animal Control about a rabid dog and Danny periodically offered her expert opinion as the sole hunter in the car. I barely heard them. My mind kept replaying those few seconds over and over.

The deer. The blood. Those empty eyes, staring back at me.

_Something tore its throat open._

Needless to say, I didn’t nap until dinner. I didn’t sleep at all for another few days. But eventually, when I failed to wake up one night with a monster sucking my blood, the memory began to soften. Maybe it really had been just my imagination, or some kind of weird sleep paralysis. Nap paralysis? The deer I started to write off as a coincidence, and that might have been the end of it all.

Until I saw her again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one is a bit shorter than usual, but I reached a good stopping place in the flow of the words and figured I'd just leave it there. There's a bit of a CW for...blood mentions, I guess? Uncanny imagery? It's a southern gothic vampire story, so I'd be surprised if people weren't expecting those, but consider this your official warning.

You’re probably waiting for me to say that I saw her outside my window one night, silhouetted against the moon, eyes still blank and glowing and staring in at me ominously. Or maybe in the headlights of my car as they swung through the woods around a highway curve. Or feeding on some roadkill in my driveway one misty morning.

I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Because I saw her in the last place anyone would expect to see a backwoods monster, a brightly-lit place with modern art cutouts of food set high on the beige walls and more flavors of Greek yogurt than a suburban mom could shake a rolled-up yoga mat at.

At first, it didn’t register. Not only because this was the neighborhood Publix at 5 PM, but because I didn’t recognize her. She was wearing clothing, for starters. In a loose, flowy black tank top and what appeared to be skintight leather pants, with her hair falling in soft, dark brown curls to her shoulders, she could have been anyone. Anyone who dressed a bit outside the local norm, true, but there was plenty of sartorial variation even this deep in track-shorts-and-San-Destin-t-shirts country. I think I vaguely assumed she was a student at the local design school or a would-be rock star down from the city.

Until she looked up, and I felt my blood turn to ice. 

High cheekbones, thin lips, dramatic brows over heavy-lidded dark eyes. I’d have known that face anywhere. It hadn’t left my nightmares for the past two weeks, even as it moved from a starring role to a background terror in the shadows. My heart pounded in my ears.

_Can’t move. If I stay still, I’ll be safe. Can’t move or this moment will go forward and she’ll see me and she’ll-_

“Hey. Can I help you, cutie?”

A treacherous part of my human brain tapped the terrified prey animal within and noted that a very pretty girl had just called me “cutie” in a voice like warm velvet and was now staring as I stood there, frozen, gawping at her like an idiot. Or, you know, a terrified prey animal.

“Hello?” She straightened up, letting the freezer door shut. I dimly noticed a pint of Haagen-Daas in her hand. “Are you having a stroke? Because I really don’t want to call 911.”

I frantically tried to make my mouth work. “Uh” was all that came out.

The girl looked at me a moment more. “Oh wait. It’s you. Well, that makes a lot more sense.”

“You know me?” The sound of my own voice shocked me back to responsiveness; the evolved part of my brain must have won out after all.

With an almost blasé expression, she replied, “Yes. Well, we haven’t been introduced, but you saw me feeding on a stag in the woods and I think that’s something we’d both remember. You clearly do.”

A jazzy cover of The Girl From Ipanema came on the PA system, and utterly failed to make the situation- and the awkward silence –less surreal. Did she just…?

“Wait, you- that’s-” I stammered, trying to keep up with the strangest conversation of my life to date. The girl tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.

“What, you’d rather I insult your intelligence by lying?” she asked. “Oh, or maybe you think there’s some elaborate supernatural masquerade I’m supposed to take great pains to uphold.”

Condensation from the milk bottle was running down my leg. I shifted its position, only to wind up holding it away from my body at an awkward angle. Perfect. “I mean, that’s generally how it seems to work.” At least it was a coherent sentence that time.

She snorted. “According to who, YA fantasy authors? Oh, cupcake. I would have thought a Styrian girl would know better. Have things that go bump in the night ever taken the slightest pains to hide themselves from you?”

A memory sprang to mind unbidden, of twelve-year-old Perry’s habitual slouch disappearing almost overnight and the transparent soldier with the glowing eyes she said frowned at her every time her shoulders crept forward. Etiquette lessons from a ghost hadn’t seemed strange at the time. After all, that’s how Danny learned saber-fighting the summer I turned ten. And then there was the prom incident. I never figured out how the chair started rocking on its own, but neither I nor my hapless beard of a date wanted to talk about it afterwards.

The strange girl smiled sardonically, almost as if she could see the memories playing back in my head. “That’s what I thought. Listen-” she hefted the ice cream “-this is going to melt before long, so I’d better go. I’m one of the things you don’t talk about. Have a nice day.” With a mocking little salute she brushed past me and headed off towards the registers, heavy boots clomping on the sickly coral tiles. 

“Oh, and by the way,” she called over her shoulder, “My name is Carmilla. Nice to meet you, Laura Hollis.”

The logical leap wasn’t difficult to make. She knew my name without being told; she probably knew where I lived, my phone number, my family and friends- hell, she might know what I had for lunch on the fifth day of sixth grade if she’d been around long enough.  
So I’d better keep my mouth shut.

\----------------------------

The problem is, I’ve never been good at things you don’t talk about.

You don’t talk about the hooded figures in the woods behind Larry Gardner’s house, but I tried to write an investigative piece for the middle school newspaper about them. I still don’t remember all of what happened, but I wound up on my ass in the backyard, pajamas soaked through with dew, squinting into the sunrise when I definitely hadn’t gone out past sunset. I managed to sneak back inside without waking my dad, because somehow the alarm for the back door- and only the back door –had been disabled. When I stumbled upstairs and into my room, half-asleep the whole time, I found a single sprig of fresh rosemary on my bed. The message was as clear as Carmilla’s: they knew where I lived and slept. They could disable the alarm, to a specific door, any time they chose.

It still took two mysteriously broken computers and my editor-in-chief coming down with a nasty case of shingles to keep me from publishing an account of my would-be investigation.

So you won’t be surprised to hear that, at 11:30 that night, my computer was a mess of open tabs for search terms like “girl eating deer in the woods,” “humanoid supernatural being that eats animals,” and “deer-eating girl probably not human Carmilla.” Some things you just don’t talk about, but nobody ever forbade intense Googling.

I leaned back in my desk chair, stopping before the point when I knew it would start to tip worryingly towards the floor, and rubbed my eyes. The sun had set with me still deep in research, so the blue-white glow of the screen was the only light in the room. It illuminated parts of the little alcove that served as my “office,” casting eerie shadows over a now-outdated desktop tower, a vintage decoupage trash can, and a small, overstuffed bookshelf. The main room was completely dark, with only the vaguest outlines of bed, bowl chair, and dresser visible.

Nothing. Hours and hours of searching had turned up nothing. Unless you count weird hunting porn and some Italian ghost story from the 1880s, which I definitely don’t. Whatever Carmilla was, it was something the Internet hadn’t yet catalogued.

Stretching, I stood up and pulled the string on my desk lamp. The bulb flared to life, casting a warm glow behind the laminated paper shade; the soft light only made me sleepier, and I could barely keep my eyes open for the ten steps that would get me to my bed. I was barely able to turn down the covers and slip under them before I drifted off.

That was the first night I had the dream.

_She’s here. If she’s here, nothing can be wrong._

_**Are you paying attention, little one?** _

_A long gown falls around me, cotton both softer and heavier than anything I know in waking life, trimmed with cascades of delicate lace several inches deep. It’s too elaborate to be informal. It’s a nightgown. Both of these things are facts in my mind, natural as breathing. I am me and me is Laura Hollis, but also- who?_

_**Me.** _

_The face in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, set into the wall and framed with sprays of golden ormolu flowers, is alien. It is my face. It is thinner, more elegant, with narrower eyes and a chiseled jaw. My long, light brown hair hangs in a braid down my back._

_Lightning flashes and I jump. There’s no time to stop. I have to get to safety. I am running, away from the mirror, down a dark hall that never seems to end. Oil paintings, portraits from years gone by, appear in each flickering blue-white flash only to be swallowed by the darkness again. They look outdated: wide skirts and spaniel curls that are over a century old and thirty years old at the same time. I have two brains registering these things. I have one brain registering these things, but there are two people in it, squeezed into one. In dream-logic this makes sense._

_And in dream logic, I am in her room now. She sits lounging on the chaise with one arm draped over the sloping back and gazes out the window. When I jump at a particularly loud clap of thunder, she notices me._

_Oh. Carmilla again. This must be a new nightmare._

_**Pay attention!** _

_“Sweetheart,” she says with a smile. “Dearest.” She stands up and her gray silken robe- painted silver in the lightning –rustles against the polished wood floor as she approaches me. “Were you frightened by the storm?” I am drawn into her open arms and everything is safe, everything is right, she is warm and real and I never want to leave her embrace again._

_“Laura you can’t be here no I won’t do this stop why are you doing this let me go let me GO.” A stream-of-consciousness whisper in my ear, the words going on forever._

_She smiles down at me. I am lying on the quilted velvet upholstery of the chaise, her arm under my back. She pushes the hair back from my neck, stroking it, caressing my cheek.  
“You’re alright now, Liebling.”_

_Yes. I am alright. This is the most alright I have ever been._

_The stroking stops._

_“Millarca?” I hear myself-not-myself say. The R is not meant to be silent. The R has always been silent. I look up into blank, black eyes. The girl-monster regards me dispassionately; oh god, there’s no emotion there, no personality. A thing hovers above me, a thing shaped like a human but so far from human that nobody could mistake her for it. She tilts her head, just the barest bit too far for a human neck to bend._

_Her mouth opens in a parody of a smile, between a grin and a snarl. And then she sinks her teeth into my throat._

_**Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin.** I hear the words between guttural, animal noises and the wet dripping sound of my own blood._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does it sound like a southern cliche to say that summer wind smelled like cut grass and magnolia? Yes. Is that what my own backyard smelled like most of the summer? Also yes. Just keep that in mind.

“Wait. She’s what?”

I took a sip of my lemonade and set the glass back down on the green linoleum of the island. “She’s some kind of supernatural being I saw eating a deer on the side of the road. Try to keep up.”

Danny chewed on her lower lip, tracing the pattern on the commemorative Dollywood cup in her hand with her thumb. She hadn’t taken a sip since I started talking, and I silently congratulated myself for having managed to find the topic that could overcome her obsessive loathing of flat soda. Who knew it would have been a non-human, potentially violent girl who knew where I lived and preferred moderately priced neighborhood grocery stores? I had to hand partial credit to the setting, though. Of all the topics we’d spent hours discussing over lunch in my kitchen on sunny June days, this had to be the most esoteric.

“You’re not saying anything,” I prompted after a silence so long I began to wonder if I’d literally struck her dumb.

“Not much I can think of to say.” She shrugged, laced her fingers together, and stretched her arms out in front of her.

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

That earned me a particularly scornful look. “Please. I’m not some tourist.” The last word came out with a mixture of exhaustion and scorn instantly recognizable by any Styrian. I’d used it my fair share, mostly the summer I made the mistake of volunteering to lead the downtown ghost tours. Never underestimate what you can get teenagers to believe with a lantern, a borrowed hoop skirt, and a dramatic stage whisper- or the injuries you can get when they bowl you over running from whatever invisible being just threw gravel at them.

“I definitely don’t think you’re crazy,” Danny continued. “But I think you will be if you get any deeper into this.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

“You heard me. She said to let it go, so let it go. Have a self-preservation instinct for once in your life. Focus on something else, like…I don’t know, the local hummingbird migration patterns.”

“Seems like I should be focusing on the invasion of the body-snatchers.” I drained my glass, stomped over to the sink, and set it down a little too hard against the cool metal. “Who are you and what have you done with Danny Lawrence?”

She wandered over to join me, setting her cup in the sink more gently and raking a hand through her hair. “Laura, you know normally I’d dive right in. I’d say, head down to the archives and let’s go crazy.” She raised one hand to gesture vaguely towards the absent county records office before letting it drop. “But this is different.” 

“Yes! It’s different!” I replied. “She’s tangible! She communicates in direct conversation and not like- like- random acorns left on my pillow! We can actually talk to her and maybe she could finally explain why this place is so weird!”

My outburst hung in the air for a moment. Danny stared through the open slats of the blinds at a robin perched on the hanging bird feeder outside. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I made a note to tell Dad they were still having some trouble getting at the seeds. The bird tilted its head and chirped, and its beady black eyes gleaming in the sunlight.

Black eyes.

_Carmilla, made monstrous, craning her neck above me in that darkened house. Lightning gleaming off her long, thin canine teeth and absolutely no feeling in those eyes as dark as a pit-_

“Maybe we’re not supposed to know.”

I shook my head, pushing the dream images firmly out of my mind. In the here and now, Danny was still looking out the window. The cardinal spread its wings and flew away, leaving the feeder with its empty perch to rock slightly with the force of its departure.

“What?”

“It’s one thing to dig through death records and try to put names to hauntings, or leave pieces of candy in the woods and see if they’re still there the next day. But what if we aren’t meant to really understand what makes this town Paranormal, USA?” She finally turned to look at me, and I could read the concern in her eyes as clearly as words on a page. “Yeah, she’s tangible and she communicates. Did you ever stop and think how that might make her more dangerous?”

“I-” –hadn’t actually considered that, if I was being honest. Snarky, sure. Patronizing, definitely. Unfairly hot, not even going to go there. But dangerous? Did danger really fuel a Rocky Road addiction next to screaming toddlers in trendy Uppa Baby strollers?

“Yes,” I replied at last. Because of course I had. Of course part of my mind- a part I was used to merrily ignoring –had marked Carmilla as dangerous. She ate a deer, for Pete’s sake. And then there were the dreams.

No. Don’t think about the dreams. Don’t talk about the dreams. They’re just dreams. They don’t mean anything but your brain processing random thoughts and images. Even if it’s been the same random thoughts and images every night for a week.

“I thought about it, but I thought…”

I trailed off, unwilling to admit the end of the sentence. I thought danger happened to other people, people in stories. People on creepypasta websites like that one about the park rangers. The Fair Folk might sing here, but they never kidnapped anyone under the hill.

“I mean, this is Styria, not Camelot. We’re a town; we’re pretty much the greater Nashville area. The stuff here hasn’t ever exactly been murder ballad-level bad. Or even, like, moderately bad, come to think of it.”

Danny laughed incredulously. “Oh, you did not. You did not just ‘nothing ever happens here’ our own situation. Come on, Hollis! That’s always what the ingénue says before everything goes to shit!”

“Danny!” I spread my arms wide and twirled, indicating the entire kitchen. From the battered table and chairs with their white pleather cushions to the artisanal wooden bowl of pears to the little kitchen witch doll hanging in an alcove next to the brand-new fridge, a gift from Dad’s partner after her trip to Sweden, nothing more aggressively normal could have been imagined. “This isn’t some kind of horror story, okay? This is real life. Magic isn’t all big and dramatic in real life. You know that.”

Her eyes went wide, but she was laughing in earnest now. “Okay. That’s it. You’re officially dead meat. When a big piano labeled ‘ACME’ falls out of the sky and crushes you, just remember I called it.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” I stopped twirling and flopped into a chair. “You tried to warn me, you pointed out the error of my ways, I in my hubris was too blind to blah blah blah. So, are you in?”

“In what?” she asked cautiously.

“In for another good, old-fashioned Hollis and Lawrence paranormal investigation.” When she hesitated, I waggled my eyebrows. “I’m sure Betty would be impressed if you found something big.”

Danny rolled her eyes, but a faint pink flush rose in her cheeks. “First of all, _Elizabeth_ is the only person in Styria not convinced that any of this is real. Secondly, I can’t impress her if I’ve been dragged off to certain doom by a deer-eating ice cream fiend .”

“Come on,” I scoffed. “Like I said, people don’t just go missing here.”

Have you ever wished you could go back in time and slap your previous self? Or maybe insert a laugh track behind certain moments of your life, or a gasping audience track, or both?

Enough said.

After Danny left, with a promise to drive me to the county archives in the near future, I didn’t think much more about our conversation. Doing laundry isn’t generally conducive to pondering the supernatural; messing around on YouTube even less so. Dad got home about halfway through my third John Oliver video, and the smell of saffron and spicy chorizo wafting up from the kitchen was enough to drive any lingering thoughts of leather pants and cryptic warnings from my mind.

It wasn’t until some time later, when I was sitting on the back deck licking the last traces of paella off my fork, that something brought Carmilla back to my mind. I’m still not entirely sure what it was; maybe a noise from the woods behind the house or some shift in the scents on the wind. But suddenly, she was once again all I could think about.

Dad leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. He reached out and squeezed my hand. “So what do you think? Has your old man finally mastered Spanish cuisine?”

I rolled my eyes. “I think you’ve mastered pretty much every kind of cuisine on the globe,” I muttered. But a hint of fondness still crept into my tone.

We sat in silence for a moment. Somewhere in the distance, possibly on one of Mr. Larry’s fruit trees next door, a mockingbird trilled loudly enough to be heard over the distant hum of a lawn mower. The breeze was a welcome respite from the heat, raising goosebumps across my arms now that the sun was setting and carrying with it the smell of cut grass and magnolias. The setting sun cast its last reddish light on the tops of pines that marked the back of our yard, and the leaves of the taller, older trees in the copse beyond. Maybe it had rained shortly before, cooling the air down a bit, or maybe there was some kind of pressure system. I don’t know what makes that evening’s temperature stand out in my memory, and yet it does.

Everything I’d ever known, laid out before me. Here, Dad had taught me to play catch and later, how to evade a charging grizzly bear. Here I’d built a dozen snowmen in the one big snowfall each winter. I couldn’t imagine anything safer or more comforting, ghosts or not, Fair Folk or not.

“Dad?”

“Hm?”

“Has…” I paused, unsure how to phrase the question. Even in a town like this, even for a police officer, there were limits to a person’s suspension of disbelief. Finally, I settled on, “Has anyone ever gone missing here?”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Gone missing?”

“Mysteriously. Or gone missing and never been found.” I traced the tines of my fork through the lines of olive oil on my plate, trying to keep my tone casual.

“Mysteriously,” he muttered half under his breath. His brow furrowed and his lips moved slightly. I could practically see the case files flashing before his eyes.

After a minute or so, he shook his head. “Nope. No mysterious missing persons since I’ve been on the force. There were a few cases that looked fishy, but it all got explained in the end.” 

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. 

“Why do you ask?”

Was there a way to take back a sigh of relief? None came immediately to mind. I mentally kicked myself. “Um, no reason. Just something I found online earlier.”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded thoughtfully, and I pressed my foot against the worn wooden planks to push my chair in a circle. Anything to avoid that patented Sherman Hollis I-can-see-right-through-you look. But of course, when I got back to where I started, it was still there. At least this look was tinged with amusement (unlike, say, the time I got caught sneaking out to Malahsia Jones’ pool party in fifth grade).

“Were you looking up the old Sheridan place again? I’m not staying up the next time you refuse to go to sleep because you’re deep in some message board argument about whether or not it’s haunted.”

I blinked. “No. Who said anything about the Sheridan place?”

“Mysterious disappearances?” He looked at me, eyebrows raised. “The mob that marched on the house looking for their daughters? None of this is related to your sudden interest in the subject?”

A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the breeze. “I’ve never heard any of that before.”

He shrugged and replied, “My granddad told me the story all the time. Ten girls went missing back in 1872, around the time that stranger came to stay with the Sheridans-”

“Miss K,” I supplied almost unconsciously. “The letter calls her Miss K.”

“Miss K, then.” He stood, stretched, and stacked my plate on top of his. “They thought Mr. Sheridan had something to do with the missing girls, though I’m not sure why.”  
“Did they find them?”

“Depends on who you believe. The legend is so dramatic I doubt it’s true. Teenagers run off all the time, and there was a lot of chaos back then. After the war and all.”

“What was the legend?” I asked. The fireflies were beginning to rise like tiny stars from the grass, glowing and winking out one by one. The red-gold light had faded to a deepening indigo, shadows growing black and impenetrable. 

He paused before the screen door, looking so normal holding the plates in one hand and the glasses in the other. Some spice had left a dusty brown stain on his shirt, such a familiar mark of his culinary experiments that my heart ached a little. This was Dad. This was home. This was safe.

“The legend was, they found the girls’ bodies in the woods behind the house with their hearts torn out. Messy, like something wild had gotten them. Some kind of animal.”

I said something, I don’t know what; some platitude. I followed him inside. I helped with the dishes, moving on autopilot through a task I’d done a hundred times. I settled into the big, leaking green easy chair behind the coffee table to watch Downton Abbey.

I tried not to think about a bloody, ruined deer carcass and a predator’s eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wound up being about a thousand words longer than I intended. I usually have the opposite problem, so that's a plus, I suppose?

I couldn’t have followed Danny’s advice if I’d tried. That became apparent pretty quickly. After all, it’s difficult to avoid the supernatural when it’s constantly appearing in your grocery store. And the Starbucks line. And vanishing around a corner in one of the trendy strip malls that had begun popping up like weeds across the countryside a few years earlier. It seemed my mysterious acquaintance had been serious about the whole “no masquerade” thing; nobody could mistake her actions for keeping a low profile.

I never tried to talk to her. There was adventurous and then there was just plain stupid, and contrary to popular belief, I do understand the difference. Whether my understanding lines up exactly with everyone else’s is up for debate. But to my credit, I at least didn’t go walking merrily into the jaws of known evil- or at least, known deer-mauling and veiled threats.

Yet. I keep reminding myself that there’s a yet here. I didn’t know it then. I’m still not sure if I’d have done anything differently.

In fact, between wasting long, hot afternoons on Netflix and lovingly crafting Ginny/Luna fanfics when I could get up the motivation, Carmilla scarcely crossed my waking mind. Until the day I spotted her in one place that completely defied all logic.

Whoever invented the homogenous white tile and eye-piercingly bright can lights of Forever 21 may have been going for a liminal space effect, but I’m pretty sure even they’d agree that a befanged supernatural being idly flipping through racks of polyester chiffon skirts was pushing things a bit. Nevertheless, there she was, beachy waves and leather pants painting the perfect picture of a college girl just a bit too into her parents’ ACDC records.

I ducked behind a rack of long jackets, my heart not hammering but definitely beating a bit faster. I had no reason to believe she’d hurt me. I had no reason to believe she wouldn’t. Letting out a shaky breath, I peered out from between a mustard-yellow slicker and a truly unfortunate attempt to bring shoulder pads back into the mainstream. To this day I have no idea what I expected to see. A rampage of epic proportions? A perky salesgirl getting her throat torn out? The sudden manifestation of a shadow beast in a stylish, floppy sunhat?

Carmilla pulled a cold-shoulder top from off the rack, held it up against herself, and made a face at what I guessed was her reflection in a nearby mirror. Yep. Serious mayhem and terror here.

As the Queen of the Night slipped on a pair of sunglasses with round, white frames that made her resemble a large insect and began striking poses in the mirror, I rolled my ankle slowly in one direction, then another. My entire leg was beginning to fall asleep from the stress of crouching, and for what? An up-close and personal view of Carmilla’s mindless weekend shopping. I shifted my weight to the other side, stretched, and winced at the pins and needles that shot through my right leg. Danny would have rolled her eyes at my failure to stretch before taking a particularly cramped surveillance pose.

As if on cue, my phone began buzzing furiously in my pocket. A woman with a perfectly-styled white bob and a perfectly irritated scowl pushed aside two coats to glare at me from the other side of the rack; I stumbled away, managing to get out a half-formed apology. With a satisfied look, she resumed shopping and I focused on my phone.

 _Hippolyta._ Danny. Speak of the devil. I swiped my thumb across the bottom of the screen and wedged the device firmly between my ear and shoulder as I feigned extreme interest in a rack of cropped sweaters.

“Hello?”

“Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me you aren’t stalking that Carmilla girl around the mall.”

“What?” I nearly dropped the phone and several nearby patrons shot me disgusted looks as my voice reached an apparently unacceptable volume.

I heard Danny’s sigh even over the thumping bass in the background. “Mel spotted her wandering around earlier. Weirdly pale girl, wavy black hair, about two Sephoras’ worth of eyeliner, and- I’m quoting here –‘deeply hot but kind of scary-looking.’ Wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”

I rubbed at my temples with one hand and shifted the Old Navy bag in the other to a more comfortable position. The perils of having a friend who worked at the mall: nothing got past the Abercrombie and Fitch mafia. One of them always seemed to be on break, and if something happened at Blue River Galleria, they’d know about it.

“She just happened to be in here at the same time as me, Danny. I’m not following her around or anything,” I replied. I still darted to another rack closer to the entrance when Carmilla moved in that direction, but I had the grace to feel a bit guilty as I did so.

“Uh huh.” She didn’t sound convinced.

“I swear!” The last bit came out a little too loudly, and several heads whipped in my direction. Including Carmilla’s. “Damnit,” I muttered under my breath, forgetting the phone for a moment.

“What happened?” A note of concern crept into Danny’s voice, and I resisted the urge to smack my forehead.

“Um. Nothing,” I said, edging towards the entrance in the most casual way I could muster. Incredibly, Carmilla didn’t seem to have noticed me at all- or simply didn’t care about my presence. “Hey, are you on the phone at work right now?”

“So, first, that was the most transparent attempt to change the subject I’ve ever heard,” Danny said, but she sounded more amused than worried. Ten points to me. “And second, I’m on my lunch break in three…two…one…” I heard the satisfying click of a computer key in the background. “Now.”

“Great,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to go over our plan of attack at the archives.”

 “Yes! Right. Meet me by Auntie Anne’s in five minutes?”

“Sure thing. Talk to you then.” With some difficulty I dislodged the phone from its precarious perch and pressed the red off button. At least the rest of my exit could be a bit more dignified than hobbling along with one free hand. I strode through racks of faux cashmere and every kind of synthetic fabric known to man, a girl on a mission.

“Have fun, cupcake.”

I almost didn’t hear the whisper, so quiet that it danced on the edge of being inaudible. But there it was, no louder than a sigh but undeniable as I brushed past Carmilla. She didn’t look up; her head remained bowed over a tassel necklace in my peripheral vision.

So much for not having seen me.

\----------------------------------------------------------

The archives weren’t busy. The archives are never busy, even on a Saturday afternoon. The members of the historical commission have already gleaned everything they can out of the small, unassuming brick building and moved on to more sophisticated sources of knowledge; most kids prefer to do projects on the vast world outside of this not-really-that-small town. I can’t say I blamed them. After all, where’s the excitement in things you’ve seen a hundred times before?

So when the bored-looking receptionist at the desk shot Danny and I a look that suggested we’d turned into aliens, it didn’t come as a shock.

I sighed and flapped the hem of my tank top a few times, wafting icy air against the sweat-drenched skin beneath. Whoever had remembered to put air conditioning in there during construction deserved a medal.

With a glance at the heat waves shimmering above the asphalt outside, I revised my thought. Multiple medals. More than five medals. Possibly a dozen medals, depending on how much weight they could handle. And they’d need all those decorations to make up for the swift punch in the face I’d always longed to dish out for hiring that particular architect.

In a town of gorgeous historical buildings, I suppose there had to be a couple of total doozies. The Williamson County Archives were tragically among them. Tile that had aged to a dull oatmeal color formed three hallways off the main lobby: one on the right that led into a tiny and frankly depressing museum, one on the left guiding the military-minded visitor to a collection of army records and vintage flags, and a third that led to the realm of bookshelves, card catalogues, and a few battered tables.

Oh, and the aforementioned confused-looking volunteer.

As we approached the desk, my hand fumbled in my purse almost instinctively. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Danny pulling out a card identical to the one my fingers brushed in the depths of the zippered pocket. I presented mine for inspection with a smile.

“Hi! Laura Hollis. I’ve been here before.”

“Mhm,” came the absent reply as the woman examined the little rectangle of white cardboard with my signature scrawled across it. She glanced at Danny’s as well and nodded to herself before opening her Nicholas Sparks novel again.

“You ladies know the ropes, I’m sure. Copies are five cents a page and put any books you pull out on the cart instead of reshelving them. Come get a volunteer if you want to use the microfiche readers. Computer password is-”

“113064,” I cut her off, trying to beam even harder. They tended to leave you alone faster if you smiled. “The Battle of Styria. I know.”

Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t look up from the page. “Good luck, then. Let me know if you need help finding anything.”

After the obligatory thanks, I dragged Danny over to the nearest table and set my notebook down on the ancient particleboard with a satisfying- if quiet –smack. “They love the ‘ardent local historian’ act,” I said proudly.

Danny appeared to be stifling a smile. “Probably because you don’t even have to try, Hollis.”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” I protested without any real ire. The routine of an afternoon in the archives was one I settled into quickly, like a road worn smooth or a comfortable sagging spot on a couch. The hours I’d lost here would probably outnumber the dust motes floating in the few sunbeams that slanted through the closed blinds.

I opened the notebook to a fresh page and wrote at the top in purple pen, _The Sheridan House_. Capping the pen, I turned to Danny. “Buckle up and let’s get to work.”

Archival research is like being a bloodhound. Or what I imagine being a bloodhound is like. There’s a certain joy in utterly losing yourself in a search, leapfrogging from one source to another. As the stack of books in generic red binding on the table grew, my notes turned into three pages of purple scrawl. Between the whirring of microfiche, frantic typing on the wheezing old desktop computer, four hours slipped past before I heard the receptionist say in a voice barely above a whisper, “We’re closing in ten minutes.”

Four hours, and I’d learned almost nothing new.

I slumped back in the stiff chair and rubbed at my eyes. “Well, that was fruitful.”

“I’ve never seen someone actually swear at a set of death records,” Danny said thoughtfully.

With a raised eyebrow, I replied, “Then you must not have been paying much attention.” I scanned the names that mocked me from the lined page. At least twenty girls between here and Nashville whose dates of death were within five years of 1872, all between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. I couldn’t break it down any further- and that wasn’t even accounting for missing records, unrecorded home births, potential christenings of older children whose actual birthdays were never written down, names mangled by census-takers, unsavory deaths quickly hushed up to avoid scandal…all the variables made my head spin.

“Well, we can come back later with fresh eyes.” Danny stood up, slipped my notebook into my bag, and held it out to me with a tired smile. “You’ve solved mysteries before; I know you can do it again.”

As we wandered past the metal detectors at the reading room door, I shook my head. “I’m telling you, there’s absolutely nothing to go on here. These girls couldn’t be more impossible to find if they were living lesbians on the CW.”

She laughed loudly enough to startle the desk volunteer, and I began trying to console myself. After all, Sweet Cece’s was right across the street. A strawberry froyo with cookie chunks could cure all ills, or at least most of them. The kind that came from frustrating research sessions and stupid, elusive-

“Carmilla?”

I barely realized I’d spoken until Danny stiffened beside me and I looked up to see her eyes wide with shock. It was hard to tear my gaze away from a previously uninteresting display of antique dresses, because standing in front of it was just the supernatural being I couldn’t seem to avoid.

If we looked out of place in the archive, Carmilla looked like she didn’t even belong in the same dimension. Her usual combat boots, studded cuff bracelets, and floaty black top (did she have an infinite supply somewhere) were the polar opposite of composite ceiling tiles and dusty books. Not to mention nothing like the beaded black dress that seemed to have her full and undivided attention.

“Is that her?” Danny whispered. The slight fear in her tone snapped something in me.

No. This was ridiculous. This was my turf, and if Carmilla wanted to barge in, she could just deal with the consequences.

“Yep.” Without further ado, I grabbed Danny’s hand and began towing her over to where Carmilla stood.

“Laura! Laura, what the hell? Maybe not antagonizing the weird deer-eating girl would be a good idea?” I could hear her stumbling behind me as she tried to keep her footing, but I didn’t stop.

“You eat deer, too. It’s not that weird,” I replied.

“Yeah, after I kill them with a crossbow! Not with my bare hands like some kind of…” she trailed off as I stopped next to Carmilla. Who, for her part, remained still as a statue.

“Were you going to finish that sentence, Miss Lawrence, or should I be flattered that you stopped when you did?” Her voice was deadpan, without a hint of emotion. I didn’t bother to ask how she knew Danny’s name; neither of us did. Instead, I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath.

“Carmilla, this is Danny. Danny, Carmilla.”

Carmilla turned at last, leaning back against the railing in front of the costume exhibit with a languid grace. She extended a hand in Danny’s direction. “Charmed.”

Danny didn’t take it. Some of the concern in her expression shifted into something between annoyance and discomfort. “What do you want with Laura?” she asked stiffly.

“Whoa, Danny, could you maybe slow down just a-” I began.

“I think a better question,” said Carmilla, cocking her head to one side, “is, what does she want with me? I’ve left her more or less alone since our first conversation. Can’t really say the reverse for Lois Lane here.” She jerked her thumb at me.

“Um, excuse me, Lois Lane here is…well, here,” I chimed in. “Could you two maybe stop talking over me?”

Carmilla shifted her weight and suddenly the full force of her attention was on me. “Did you have something to contribute to the conversation, creampuff? Maybe some insight into why you need to document every time you see me buying sunglasses or grabbing a latte?”

“Ah…” I hadn’t really been expecting that question. “Posterity? You are new in town, after all.” Perfect. Great save, Hollis. If Carmilla wasn’t anything, she certainly wasn’t new.

As if she’d read my thoughts, Carmilla chuckled. “Oh, cutie, you have no idea how wrong you are. I was here when this was new,” she said, waving a hand at the rich black silk twinkling with jet beads, “and I knew the girl who wore it when her grandmother died. I’m older in town than half the town itself.”

_Older in town._

The thought was parent to the deed. Before I could stop and consider what a bad idea this might be, I heard myself saying, “Do you remember anything about the girls who went missing by the Sheridan House?”

I expected derisive laughter. I expected a cryptic smile. I expected pretty much anything but the color draining from Carmilla’s cheeks and a haunted look creeping into her eyes. This century-old girl looked like she’d seen a ghost- or worse, given her long association with Styria.

“Why,” she asked quietly, “do you want to know about that?”

“Laura,” Danny hissed, tugging on my sleeve. “Let’s _go_.”

I ignored her. “Most of the freaky stuff here can’t be documented. It’s too uncertain, too tenuous. But this- this would have left a trail. Names, death records.”

“And what does that have to do with you, Laura Hollis?” Her dark brown eyes seemed to bore into mine, their gaze intense and focused and so old I was amazed anyone mistook her for the teenager she looked like. But I didn’t look away.

“I finally want answers. I want to know what’s going on here. I want some of this weird stuff that’s a part of all of us in this town to make sense.”

Carmilla held my gaze for a long moment. Finally, with a look I couldn’t quite interpret, she said, “It so happens that I’ve been looking into the Schloss too. If you want- and if there’s any chance it will get you to calm down –we could pool our research.”

Danny grabbed my arm and took a step towards the door. “Okay,” she said to Carmilla, “it’s been unnecessarily creepy, but we really should be going. Thanks for the offer and please don’t come after us in our sleep.”

“Okay.”

“Pardon?”

“What the hell, Hollis?”

“Okay,” I repeated. “You heard me. Let’s do this. You’re an ancient whatever-you-are and I know how to butter up half the historical commission. Let’s figure out some deeply terrifying cold case murders.”

I heard Danny groan behind me. A small smile crept across Carmilla’s face. “Then we’re in business, creampuff.”


End file.
